Editing Grantham (section)

===Origins===
The local historian Michael Honeybone has "no doubt that the town of Grantham was established during [[Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain|[Anglo-]Saxon]] times"; its name suggests it emerged in the earliest phase of Anglo-Saxon settlement, probably by the 7th century.<ref name="Honeybone15"/> The archaeological evidence for this is limited to finds indicating cemeteries at the sites of the Central School in Manthorpe and the junction of Bridge End Road and London Road in the town, and to small quantities of pottery sherds found on London Road, Belton Lane, Saltersford, New Somerby and Barrowby.<ref>{{Harvnb |Lane |2011 |p=20}}</ref>

The town's Saxon-period history is obscure and debated.<ref name=":4" /> The medievalist Sir [[Frank Stenton]] argued that Grantham probably emerged as an "important estate centre" before the [[Viking Age|Viking invasions]] in the 9th century and then functioned as a "minor local capital" in the [[Danelaw]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Stenton|1971|p=525}}</ref> By contrast, the historian David Roffe has argued that the town and its outlying [[Soke (legal)|soke]] were established in the 1040s or 1050s by [[Edith the Fair|Queen Edith]] and [[Leofric, Earl of Mercia]], to strengthen their hands in the county at the expense of [[Siward, Earl of Northumbria]]. They may have also created [[St Wulfram's Church, Grantham|St Wulfram's Church]] either as a new place of worship or as one revived from a possible earlier [[Monastic cell|cell]] of [[Crowland Abbey]]. Roffe argues that Siward's death in 1055 made Grantham's new role less important; as such, its soke only grew to its full extent after the [[Norman Conquest]] of England, when the king merged it with the soke of Great Ponton.<ref>{{Harvnb|Roffe|2011|p=36}}.</ref> Whatever its origins, by the time of the [[Domesday Book]] (1086, the earliest documentary evidence for the settlement), Grantham was a town and royal [[Manorialism|manor]]; under its jurisdiction fell soke comprising lands in 16 villages. St Wulfram's served this extended parish area.<ref name=":4">{{Harvnb |Roffe |2011 |p=21}}</ref>